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Summary

Indonesian Ferry Sinks. Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff. African Train Attacked by Mobs. Whenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get. So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, the slowest buses, and the most rickety trains. The Lunatic Express takes us into the heart of the world, to some its most teeming cities and remotest places: from Havana to Bogotá on the perilous Cuban Airways. Lima to the Amazon on crowded night buses where the road is a washed-out track. Across Indonesia and Bangladesh by overcrowded ferries that kill 1,000 passengers a year. On commuter trains in Mumbai so crowded that dozens perish daily, across Afghanistan as the Taliban closes in, and, scariest of all, Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by Greyhound. The Lunatic Express is the story of traveling with seatmates and deck mates who have left home without American Express cards on conveyances that don't take Visa, and seldom take you anywhere you'd want to go. But it's also the story of traveling as it used to be -- a sometimes harrowing trial, of finding adventure in a modern, rapidly urbanizing world and the generosity of poor strangers, from ear cleaners to urban bus drivers to itinerant roughnecks, who make up most of the world's population. More than just an adventure story, The Lunatic Express is a funny, harrowing and insightful look at the world as it is, a planet full of hundreds of millions of people, mostly poor, on the move and seeking their fortunes.

Author Biography

Carl Hoffman has driven the Baja 1000, ridden reindeer in Siberia, sailed an open dinghy 250 miles, and traveled to 65 countries. When he's able to stay put for more than a few months at a time, he lives in Washington, D.C., where his three children make fun of him on a pretty constant basis. He is a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler and Wired magazines, and his stories about travel and technology also appear in Outside, National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal and Popular Mechanics.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Time for Prayer

p. 1

Americas

Go!

p. 7

Hope for Buena Suerte

p. 27

Your Time Comes or It Doesn't

p. 51

Africa

Agents of Death and Destruction

p. 75

That Train Is Very Bad

p. 99

Asia

Jalan! Jalan!

p. 123

The 290th Victim

p. 157

I Can Only Cry My Eyes

p. 179

What To Do?

p. 201

Scariana

p. 221

Hope And Wait

p. 249

Same, Same, but Different

p. 269

Appendix

p. 281

Acknowledgments

p. 285

Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Mumbai: The city’s cattle class train commute has put a big questionmark over the future of a brilliant sixteen-year-old girl. RaushanJawwad, who scored over 92 percent in her class X examination afew months ago, lost both legs after being pushed out of a crowdedlocal train near Andheri on Tuesday.—Times of India, October 17, 2008

Seven

The 290th Victim

“Everything in that book is true,” said Nasirbhai. It was almost100 degrees, the humidity of the Bay of Bengal pressingdown, and he was wearing a white dress shirt over a sleevelessundershirt, pleated black slacks, and black oxford shoes. Smallscars were etched around brown eyes that studied me from awide, inscrutable face; a big stone of lapis studded one finger,and a silver bracelet dangled from his wrist. He had a barrelchest and his hands hung at his sides, ready, waiting— never inhis pockets. He looked immovable, like a pitbull, like a characterfrom another time and place, and in a way he was. “Thatbook” was Shantaram, the international best-selling novel writtenby Australian Gregory David Roberts, who’d escaped fromprison in Oz and found his way to Bombay two decades ago,where he’d become deeply involved with its criminal gangs andNasir— who always carried the honorific bhai, “uncle.”

“We met in the 1980s,” Nasirbhai said, standing on a cornerin Colaba, one of Mumbai’s oldest neighborhoods and its touristepicenter, the streets lined with vendors selling tobacco and sandalsand newspapers and bangles, pedestrians as thick on thesidewalks as attendees at a rock concert. Roberts was famousnow, a Mumbai legend, and through a friend of a friend hadconnected me to Nasirbhai, who agreed to take me deep ontothe commuter trains of the most crowded city on earth, wherethe day’s simple commute was a matter of life and death. “Travelingon these trains is very risky because they are so full,” Nasirbhaisaid. “But people must be at work, they must not be lateor their boss will fire them. They must get to their destination, sothey lean out of the doors, hang on to the windows, climb on topof the train. They risk their life to get to work every day.”

By population, the city— just nineteen miles across, with 19million souls— was bigger than 173 countries. The populationdensity of America was thirty-one people per square kilometer;Singapore 2,535 and Bombay island 17,550; some neighborhoodshad nearly one million people per square kilometer. Anever-ending stream of Indians was migrating to Mumbai,which was swelling, groaning, barely able to keep pace. In 1990an average of 3,408 people were packing a nine-car train; tenyears later that number had grown to more than 4,500. Sevenmillion people a day rode the trains, fourteen times the wholepopulation of Washington, D.C. But it was the death rate thatshocked the most; Nasirbhai was no exaggerating alarmist. InApril 2008 Mumbai’s Central and Western railway released theofficial numbers: 20,706 Mumbaikers killed on the trains in thelast five years. They were the most dangerous conveyances onearth.